


when you think of me, years down the line

by liesmyth



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Childhood trauma goes a long way, Developing Relationship, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Pre-IT Chapter Two (2019), Rare Pairings, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/pseuds/liesmyth
Summary: Connor doesn’t know what he’s doing when he buys a ticket to Richie Tozier’s show.
Relationships: Connor Bowers/Richie Tozier
Comments: 35
Kudos: 177
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	when you think of me, years down the line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [summerdayghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/gifts).



Connor never talks about his family if he can help it. He’s dated a fair bit, especially in his twenties, and there’s just no way to gently break _that_ in a casual conversation. Sometimes a guy’d ask, “So, what’s your family do?” and Connor just shrugs it off and plays like there’s no big deal, nothing to see, like he doesn’t have a clinically insane ex-teenage serial killer for a cousin. That’d scare most people off, except for the kind of guys who want to fuck serial killers, which, no, thanks.

So, he doesn’t talk about it. He does his best to never think about it either, which is why the first time Connor sees Richie Tozier on a late night couch it takes him some time to place him. He’s gotten taller and broader and his hair is professionally styled, and he makes the whole studio laugh as he trades jabs with a B-list actress on the cusp of making it big. She’s there to promote her Oscar bait and Tozier is talking about his new stand-up tour, and Connor isn’t really into either of those things and has no idea of why Tozier’s name and big glasses set off distant bells in his mind. It takes him two weeks to remember— cute kid, glasses, Maine, _Henry_.

Shit.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing when he buys a ticket to Tozier’s show in San Bernardino. It’s depressingly heterosexual, for one, and Connor can’t think that showing up there of all places is gonna make Tozier any happier to see him, but goes anyway. He gets an overpriced drink and finds himself laughing along to most of the jokes, and when the show is over he shuffles out to the lobby for the meet and greet.

“Hey, look, this is gonna be weird,” he says, and Tozier— Richie, his name is Richie and they held hands once— laughs.

“Lay it on me, dude.”

“My name’s Connor. We met… god, it was years ago. I’m, uh, Henry Bowers’s cousin?”

As a kid, Richie’s awkward glasses made his eyes look huge. Connor remembers staring at the way his eyelashes fluttered when he blinked at the console, face animated with delight. Now he stares into Richie’s face, expecting recognition, anger, scorn. Maybe he’ll tell the staff to get Connor out of here.

Instead, he just blinks down at him. And then, “Sorry, man. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

There’s no way in hell Richie Tozier doesn’t remember Henry Bowers, so Connor figures he should take a hint and go. He shrugs, feeling at least at peace with his conscience, and he’s about to walk off when Richie adds, “No offense to your cousin. I meet people all the time.”

 _No offense to_ — that’s the funniest thing Richie’s said all night. He laughs, a bit hysterically, and the whole time he feels the weight of Richie’s eyes on him.

“Right. Look, I just wanted to say, good luck with everything—”

“You wanna hang around a bit?” Richie asks, surprising them both. “I gotta wrap this up and then I was gonna go for drinks with the guys, but if you want…”

He shouldn’t want. This is not how he expected the evening to go, and he can’t get a read on Richie’s face, his guileless eyes. He wishes he knew what game they’re playing.

“Sure,” Connor says, instead. “Why not?”

Connor doesn’t know if he should call it a date. Richie pays for the drinks, and apologizes twice more for not remembering Connor, no dude, never heard of a Bowers in his _life_ , until Connor drums his fingers on the table and says, “I get it, okay? It was a long time ago.”

He thought about that afternoon, sometimes, in the painful years after Henry’s arrest. How close he’d come to getting another kid murdered just because Connor had smiled at him where people could see. The way Henry had lashed out and the painful relief he'd felt, because at least it wasn’t Connor he was jeering at.

And now here they are. He won’t say a word if Richie doesn’t, and he doesn’t speculate on which percentage of the straight act he just witnessed is a direct result of his own actions some twenty years ago. That shit must sell, anyway— the club had been packed and Richie surrounded by people in the aftermath, and Richie doesn’t look beaten up about either of these. Connor gets another drink on Richie’s tab and doesn’t think too much about it.

Richie is easy to talk to. He does most of the heavy lifting, telling funny stories about places he’s been to and terrible anecdotes from his days working as a PA on low budget productions. And then he leans back in his chair and stretches out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. They’ve been in here fifteen minutes, and it’s probably socially acceptable to ask. Good enough for Connor, anyway.

“So, you live ‘round here?” Richie says. “I mean, unless you traveled cross-country just to see me, and I fucking hope you didn’t, because the gas money alone—”

“I live ten minutes away.”

That shuts Richie right up. They make it to Connor’s place in record time; his roommate is asleep when they get in, but the kitchen is such a disaster area that Connor feels kind of obligated to apologize for it.

“It’s not usually like… I wasn’t exactly planning on this.”

Richie laughs. “You mean you don’t do this with all the guys? Should I be flattered? Is it—”

He kisses Richie to make him stop talking, and he still can’t believe this is how his evening is gonna end. It’s nice, slow and unhurried and bit awkward, and Richie shuffles his into the pillow and mutters that he hasn’t done this in a while.

“I don’t usually get groupies, y’know,” and Connor snorts and nips at his shoulder and says, “I’d never have imagined it.”

He falls asleep with Richie Tozier in his bed, the strangest possible ending to this jaunt down Memory Lane. It feels just as weird the next morning, but in a nice way; and somehow he finds himself suggesting they exchange numbers before he has to run to work.

Well, then.

It’s not like it’s a thing.

He sees Richie a few times for a year or so, and then he gets sort of serious with a guy called Kurt, so those stops. He dates Kurt for a few months, and they split amicably— a relief, since he’s a semi-regular customer at work and they still have to see each other thrice a week. Then there is the Year of Alex, which starts out fine and turns into a ruinous mess by the end, and he doesn’t hear a peep from Richie the whole time.

He starts hearing _about_ him instead, seeing clips and photo stills scrolling down his Facebook feed. Richie gets a special on HBO that blows up and a very well-timed minor part in some movie, and the next time Connor looks him up he's doing way bigger venues and the ticket prices are up twenty bucks from what he last paid for it, with the option to drop an extra fifteen to get privileged front-of-the-line access after the show.

Connor doesn’t bother with any of that. Instead, he texts— Richie’s number is still the same, though he says off-handedly that he recently bought a house, and Connor gets to see it the next time they meet up. And the time after, and the one after that, and a few dozen more in the two-odd years that follow.

If somebody asked, he wouldn’t know what to call what they have. They’re not that close, really; don’t have much of a friendship beyond casually hanging out and having sex. He only remembers Richie’s birthday because Facebook tells him it’s coming up, and he’s not about to get personal with a guy who, five years on, still dodges the topic of their first meeting. The ghost of that summer is always hanging over them, souring the air, itching like a slow-healing wound.

Connor dates around, on and off. He likes being in a relationship, though he’s self-aware enough to know that he’s not putting in as much effort as he could. Either way, one day he’s going to work it out, and at some point he’s gonna put a stop to this for good. Richie is fun to be around, with a booming laugh that warms up any room he’s in, and he kisses with that light-hearted familiarity that comes from habit, and sometimes Connor catches himself thinking that he’s going to miss him when they inevitably part ways. Not that often, because he really doesn’t see Richie enough to justify that, but he can’t shake off the feeling that they’re going on on borrowed time. 

The call comes at eight-thirty on a Tuesday morning. 

He can’t make sense of it at first, trying to keep his coffee cup steady as his hands want to shake with every new word he hears. Derry County, Juniper Hill, children gone missing like it’s 1989 all over again, and would he be able to identify the body?

“What body?” he asks, stupidly. He has the horrible flash of walking into a morgue and seeing the corpses of all the children Henry killed that summer, all lined up and blue and cold, and his child self is there too, crying tears of relief because at least it was them and not him.

“The deceased’s body.” The voice on the other end is kind. “We have you on record as next of kin, and there are some other matters… I understand if that’s an issue, but—”

“I’ll come,” Connor blurts out. It’s the last thing he wants, but some part of him feels like he has to. “I will. Just give me… I’ll be there tomorrow.”

He tosses his coffee into the nearest bin and goes straight back home. He calls Sandra at work and says he needs to take a few days, starting right now, and she hums something about short-staffing and rescheduling but lets him have it as soon as he explains what’s going on.

“That’s—sorry, man. I’m…”

“We weren’t really close,” Connor says, and fights the urge to laugh in a burst of nerves, or maybe to throw up. He throws some clothes into a bag and gets an Uber to Ontario International, and the whole time he’s on the plane he tries very hard to ignore why he’s going there at all. Two more kids missing, and the first thing he gets when he googles Derry is an opinion piece about some horrible hate crime that leaves him reeling.

Connor turns off his phone and shoves it down his pocket. He hates Derry and that whole side of the family, and he wishes he could forget all of it, the rotten town with its rotten people. His nausea only worsens when he gets to town and into the only decent hotel, and the scrawny kid at the counter winces when Connor hands him his driving license.

“The county authorities called me.” He feels obligated to say it. “I haven’t—hadn’t seen him in years.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t give you the room with the blood in the bathroom,” the kid says, bravely. “Right this way, sir.”

Connor doesn’t want to meet any of the other guests, so he shuts himself in his room and sleeps off the shocks of the day. He heads out early the next morning, walking slowly with his hands in his pockets, and doesn’t look too closely at any of the posters he sees around town. He doesn't want to know what those children looked like.

At the courthouse, he listens numbly. The escape had a body count, and then there were the two kids, eight and seven years old. He knows about the break-in at the Townhouse already, and then another one at the library…

“An axe?” Connor blurts out before he can help himself. “Really?”

“Witnesses are claiming self-defense. There’s an investigation ongoing, and it may go to trial, but…”

The look she gives him makes it very clear that not many locals are exactly saddened by Henry’s death. Connor nods.

“I know, I’m sure it was. I— I remember him, I can believe he’d drive someone to hit him with an axe, but it sounds so….”

The stern lady doesn’t seem to understand what I so funny about sharp historical artifacts used as murder weapons, so Connor lets it go. He signs what he has to and agrees to come back tomorrow, and he’s barely out of the door when he bumps into Richie.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Richie says, looking like a reanimated zombie. It’s been two months or so since the last time they saw each other, and he looks like he aged two years. His hair is limp and unwashed, eyes red, jacket crumpled like he slept in it. “What the…”

Connor wants to agree, emphatically. Then he looks more closely. “Are you all right? You look…”

“Why the hell are you— oh shit. _Fuck_.” Richie’s face goes from surprised to deathly pale, eyes darting around looking for the exit. “Fucking _shit_.”

“I…” He doesn’t know what to say. They’ve never talked about this, and if Richie shares the township’s opinion of Henry—but of course he does. He swallows, then tries again. “Uh, the county authorities called me. Because…”

“Oh.” If possible, Richie’s face goes even paler. “Fucking shit, I can’t talk to you. My lawyer would kill me if…” He looks panicked. “Please don’t tell anyone. That you know me. No one.”

He barely has time to nod before Richie’s walking away, and it takes Connor a shamefully long time to connect the dots. He hasn’t asked how everything went down, but it only takes half a question to the uniformed policeman who’s waiting around in the lobby before he gets confirmation that, yes, Richie was there when it happened. Richie was the one who _did_ _it_ , and the mere idea is ridiculous— Richie, who’s good-natured and hates sports and lounges in his pajamas til 11 AM, and who was once a kid who—okay fair. Connor can believe that someone like Richie would want to off Henry. He just can’t believe it was _Richie_ who did it.

 _An axe?_ he texts Richie, feeling stunned and kind of like he’s dreaming.

Then, five minutes later: _are you hurt? your friend from the library?_

Hours pass, and Richie doesn’t even do him the courtesy of leaving him on read. There’s no way he hasn’t seen the texts, just like there was no way he didn’t know what Connor was talking about all those years ago, and still decided to ignore it. Richie has a talent for running from things that make him uncomfortable.

 _I’m not gonna tell anyone_ , he sends. And then, _I think we’re staying at the same place_

 _That_ gets Richie to answer. He texts back an address and a time; Connor follows it to a dingy-looking café, and when he walks in he sees Richie looking grim in a booth in the back.

“They don’t serve alcohol,” he says, not even looking at him. “That’s why here— better for me to stay away from drinks, my lawyer says. Wouldn’t look good if I was drunk all the time. I don’t get how the fuck I’m supposed to stay sober, but whatever.”

“I’m sorry.”

Richie’s head snaps up to look at him. “You _should_ be sorry, I can’t leave the state. Literally, the only thing I want right now is get the fuck out of Derry, and I’m…” His jaw clenches. “Drinking shitty coffee and my manager’s calling me at all hours. Like I fucking planned this. I didn’t plan this,” he says, and Connor feels his lips curl at the corners.

“Good to know. Listen, are you…” He swallows that stupid fucking question. Richie obviously isn’t all right. “Are you hurt? And your friend—the one who was at the library?”

“No, that’s…. _that_ friend is fine.” His mouth twists as he speaks. “I had the worst fucking two days of my life, but I’m physically fine. Just peachy. Wish I wasn’t.”

The waitress picks that time to come with Connor’s coffee. She looks twenty or so, and he wants to tell her to get out of this town now that she can, that she’s lucky enough to have made it this far.

Instead, he takes a sip. The coffee tastes burnt, and he reaches for more sugar, catching Richie watching him as he does so.

“They asked me to stay for a couple of days.” He tries the coffee again, and it tastes slightly better. “Just in case. I got a flight home on Saturday morning, and I’m not gonna tell your lawyer or… anyone. We don’t have to talk about it again. You know, the usual,” he adds, and he watches Richie’s eyes widen.

“Oh.” Richie’s doing a strange thing with his face, going pink at the cheekbones like he’s embarrassed. “Oh, fuck, _that_. Listen, no, it wasn’t like…”

Connor waits. He puts another sugar into his coffee.

“I can’t tell you,” Richie blurts out. “Like, I _could_ , but then you’d think I was insane—”

“Tell me what?”

“—so it’s probably better for the both of us if you keep thinking I’m an asshole with repression issues. I mean, you wouldn’t be wrong.”

“Tell me _what_?” he presses on, urgently. Richie shakes his head.

“I can’t—”

“Richie?”

It’s a woman’s voice, to go with a pretty face and worried eyes as she looks between the both of them. She must have come in while they were talking, and Connor wonders how much of their conversation she caught.

“Hey, Bev.” And then, “This is Beverly, she’s an old friend. Bev, uh…”

“I’m Henry’s next of kin. Bowers.” Better to just come clean with it. “They called me to deal with some stuff, and…” he trails off. Her look has gone from friendly and confused to hostile mistrust.

“It was self-defense. He was going to _murder_ Mike, Richie stopped him, it was—"

“I know, I know, I _get it_. I do.” She’s still studying him intently, weighing him, and Connor stares back and tries to ignore Richie’s eyes on him. “I get it, okay. I knew him, I remember how he was. Used to scare the shit out of me when I was— before he got arrested.”

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah, I— I get that. That must have been...”

“I mean, I never actually lived here. Thank fuck.” This time he does look at Richie, watches him smile in bitter amusement. Better than the bitter despair he’d walked into earlier. “So yeah, I’m… no hard feelings. I’d offer to chip in for the lawyer fees, but I work at the post office, so.”

“I got that,” Richie says. “Look, I think I have to… we have some stuff to deal with?” He gives Beverly a questioning look, and she nods. “Anyway, I’m in town all week. All month, probably. Just the vacation I always dreamed of. Bev, can you give us, like, a minute?”

She looks surprised but steps way. Richie makes a face, eyes squinting as he leans across the table. “Look, I gotta— it’s probably best that I check in with my lawyer first, if I should talk to you. But I’ll call at some point, okay?” A pause. “Or you could, you know, text. I could… I think I could use the distraction. If you want.”

“I can do that,” Connor says, and Richie gives a jerky nod and stands up. He turns to look at him as he walks away, shoulders hunched like he’s carrying the weight of the world.

Then the door closes on Richie’s retreating back and Connor finds himself sitting at the table, alone.


End file.
